By Lenroy James
The woman sitting in the office chair looked relaxed, confident, and in an overall jovial mood. Of course, she did. She was wearing her glasses.
Nellie Campos came up with an innovative idea that she hopes will make finding mislaid eye glasses much easier. An inventor of sorts, she had arrived for an interview still shaking off a hectic day after work. As the topic turned from her workday to her new invention, she became more excited, speaking frantically about her novelty development, hoping to stir interest among prospective buyers.
“I came up with the idea about a year and a half ago,” she said. Campos, of course, is talking about the Eye Glass Retriever – miniature device that works like a personal pager and helps locate lost or misplaced glasses, anywhere.
“I would go crazy when I couldn’t find my glasses,” she said.
Campos claimed that one of her friends stepped on her glasses and it triggered, if not nurtured, the idea to fruition. Not the typical live-in-the-lab inventor, she works as a medical records clerk at New York Hospital in Flushing.
The product consists primarily of a plastic body that houses a miniature electronic circuit. The compact unit includes all electronic circuitry and components required to provide a sound-sensitive, electronic system that emits a beeping sound when activated. When the unit is activated by a clap, it automatically switches to the “on” mode, emitting a beeping sound between 10 and 30 seconds.
Users can simply store the unit with their glasses or permanently attach it. A key feature is that its plastic body can be made in various colors to match eyeglass frames, or it could be transparent so that it can be more discreetly concealed.
Although the product has not yet hit the market, the few who know about it are anxiously awaiting to invest in one, Campos said The device is easy to use, with owners only having to follow the sound after they clap. It is especially helpful for those who can’t see without their glasses, and may otherwise be unable to locate them.
Campos, bespectacled and loving it, has the full support of her husband and two daughters. “They are behind me 100 percent,” she assured in her thick Puerto Rican accent. Campos said she was a bit hesitant to actually make the Eye Glass Retriever, for fear that it wouldn’t work as well as she imagined. “Now I’m satisfied it has been approved,” she added with a smile.
The materials needed to produce the Eye Glass Retriever are readily available, competitively priced and meet federal safety standards, Campos said. Since she used existing technology for her product, producing it has been a fairly straightforward process. The end result is not only attractive, but inexpensive, too.
As she awaits landing production and distribution deals, Campos looks forward to seeing her product on prescription and non-prescription sunglasses, reading glasses and standard corrective glasses.
Although she does not consider herself as an inventor in the traditional sense, she admitted that, “I do have more ideas, but they are floating around in my head. I’m always trying to make a change.”
